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Can someone link me to where Carrie talks about concerns using Preparing and Bigger simultaneously? I know it's frequently mentioned that it's not recommended they be done together but I can't seem to find her reasons why, beyond "teacher intensive". Is there more to the picture?

Thanks!

This might be the best one I have found:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=12297&p=88574&hilit ... ger#p88574

Looking ahead, as I see from your signature you must be doing... you could easily have one of the 2 dc go half-speed if needed. Sometimes life gets busy or difficult in unexpected ways anyway, so going half-speed is ALWAYS a viable, helpful option. Or, slowing down the 3.5 yo so 1.75 yo could join would be a good option. Your 2 olders (now in LHFHG) would then naturally move ahead a year, so that when they were doing PHFHG, your younger pair (or just the older of the youngers if that works better) would be doing Beyond. HTH!

In Christ,
Julie

Thank you ladies for your replies! Julie, I'm actually asking because at some point I believe I will need to separate my older two children. While they are only 16 months apart, academically they are substantially different. Recently I had asked about beefing up Beyond for my oldest son - at not quite 7, he places solidly for Bigger...it's just the way he's been knit together! I received some excellent feedback from you and others and will be utilizing many of the suggestions this upcoming school year, making it challenging yet maturity-appropriate. Nonetheless, at some point I'm fairly certain I will need to separate them. Primarily, I don't want my older son feeling held back by his younger brother, nor do I want my younger son repeatedly feeling like he can't compare to older brother. (Admittedly, those are not current realities; I'm just speculating!) My "master plan" is to go through Little, Beyond, and Bigger in a total of four years, (HOD'ing 4 days a week and doing "Fun Fridays" with another family - nature, music, art, etc.) then reaching Preparing at grades 4 & 5 (ages 9 & 10). The thought came to me that somewhere around Bigger/Preparing is when I may want to separate them. Thus, my question arose as to why those two specific guides are so frequently seen as difficult to accomplish together.

By no means can I make any solid decisions now; it is really more a matter of just keeping in the back of my mind some possibilities of how school would best function within the context of our family dynamics!

One thing I will share you with is that my two youngest are going to be separated as well and we will also have a year where one is doing Preparing and the other is doing Bigger. If your kids are perfectly placed and they are able to meet the work load for both, then you will probably spend about 1.5 hours on Preparing with your child and maybe 2-2.5 hours with your child in Bigger. With your younger kids, it looks like you would have one in Little Hearts also at the same time then that would add about an hour 1 or so to your day. So you would be schooling for up to 5 hours a day. Currently, I spend about 4 hours a day myself in solid schooling time. That is pretty good considering I have 3 kids and the majority of the time I spend is on their 3Rs. I only say that because HOD actually saves me time. They eventually make the other areas (bible, science, history) independent so that I am really only spending time on those 3Rs. With Bigger, you spending more time getting them ready to write things down on their own, doing their notebooking, writing down their science experiments, looking up vocabulary and things like this. If you stagger start your two who will be doing this, you should be fine in schedule. So, when it comes to be my turn, I plan to have my older child start Preparing about a month or 2 before his sister moves into Bigger. This way I can get him so much more independent before I have help his sister and train her up. Even though my middle child and youngest are 20 months apart, my so is very normal in abilities but my youngest is very advanced. And even though she is advanced in skills, I want her to complete the guides that her age fits into. She made be advanced in schooling abilities but she won't necessarily be mature enough for the topics that are covered at they get older if I don't wait until she fits into that age range.